The Condemned

The Condemned packs enough red-hot fiery action for six movies. The fact that it also makes some surprisingly ironic and pertinent points about extreme violence as entertainment gives it the kind of gravitas blood and guts films like this rarely aspire to achieve. Variations on the basic premise have been seen before in movies from 1932's The Most Dangerous Game to Schwarzenegger's The Running Man. A sensation-seeking producer (Robert Mammone) makes an illegal deal to set 10 death row prisoners from a corrupt Central American lock-up loose on an island where they must fight to the death in front of a worldwide Internet audience. The winner gets his freedom and some promised cash, while the losers—all hooked up with ankle bombs and detonators—blow up. Former WWE wrestling star Steve Austin, who can kick ass like nobody's business but whose "stone cold" acting style lives up to his nickname, is a misunderstood inmate. His biggest rival is a British special agent (Vinnie Jones) who has lost all sense of humanity and will seemingly do anything and kill anyone to gain his release. The fight scenes that make up this "snuff Webcast" are vivid and exciting, and for a 100 percent shot of cinematic adrenaline this is a movie to check out. But the main theme about how far reality TV can go for the sake of getting an audience is its most intriguing element. As the producer states early on, "this is not war, it's television; and that's much more complicated." The movie even points the finger directly at the audience suggesting out loud that "the condemned" is really anyone out there watching this kind of blood fest. For a film produced by World Wrestling Entertainment and released by a studio that makes Saws and Hostels, that admission is the biggest shocker of all.